Crossroads
by alwaysandbeyond
Summary: Big and intimate. She has always wanted a marriage proposal to be big and intimate.


**A/N: This is a product of my frustration from the season finale. This chapter is mostly what happened between them until Watershed. Everything is Marlowe's words and I just rearranged them and maybe added a little more. I hope you all still enjoy it anyway. **

**Disclaimer: If I owned Castle, I wouldn't be writing this.**

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_**To Jan, for all the times I bother her during lectures.**_

_**To docnerd89, for helping me fix this, and for the wonderful things I learn from her.**_

_**To Sal, for introducing me to fan fictions, and for being my first friend in the fandom.**_

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**Big and intimate. She has always wanted a marriage proposal to be big and intimate.**

With two failed marriages, he's looking for his third time's the charm. But not her, no, when it comes to marriage, she's more of a one-and-done type of girl.

He shocks her with a wedding ring while they were solving a case. He pulled out a ring from a cake and held it high with a smile on his face. The ring isn't for her. It's just the missing piece that would finally close their case. He does it again while they were helping Ryan to figure out the perfect way to propose to Jenny. He takes the small box from Ryan's hand, and without realizing what he's doing, opens it, and blurts out, "Will you marry me?" Her mouth curves, a smile painted on her face while Ryan quickly takes the ring from Castle's hand. He's not proposing to her.

_It took him three years to say he loves her. _

He says the words with tears in his eyes, and with fear that it might have been too late. She hears him. She hears him say he loves her while she's lying on the ground, with a bullet in her heart.

She survives.

She tells him she doesn't remember. Some things are better off not being remembered. He believes her.

_It took him another year to act on his words. _

His relationship with her is complicated. He waits for her. But he's not going to have her have that wall inside forever. He tries to break it, brick by brick. And she lets him. Or at least he thinks she is letting him.

A bomb explodes.

He pulls away. She thinks she's waited too long.

"_What do you want to do?"_

Maybe she finally feels safe. She's in a place where she can finally accept everything that happened that day. She thinks her wall is finally coming down. She wants him there when it does.

She finally comes out of her shell. He tells her the words she's heard from him about a year ago.

She hangs from the edge of a building. She calls out his name. She hears his voice. But he wasn't there. He wasn't. And in that moment, she realizes what she wants.

She lives.

On a stormy Monday evening, she shows up on his doorstep, cold and soaked. She almost died, and all she could think about was him.

She just wants him

Four years. Four years they've been dancing. They dance for one more. Lines were crossed. New traditions were built. Walls were taken down and layers were peeled.

She steps on a bomb. Her life flashes before her eyes and she comes to peace with death. He can't. He won't.

She says the words he's always known.

"_Rick, I love you."_

He says them back. And as he leaves, she whispers their word.

"_Always."_

He saves her.

She's extraordinary – beauty, passion, and fierce intellect. He's always believed she is from the moment he first saw her. She's the mystery he's never going to solve. He's told her a million times.

_But she wants more._

The Twelfth is her home. It has always been her home. But sometimes, where one person sees a rose, another may see it as a chance to move on from an old life to a new one. She doesn't see D.C as a rose.

She keeps it from him. But just like bombs, secrets explode.

_It takes him three years to tell her he loves her, another year to act on it._

She wants more, and so does he. He decides he's not going to run away.

_Big and intimate__**.**__ She has always wanted a marriage proposal to be big and intimate._

He proposes to her at the place where she told him that she has built this wall inside her. And in the same place he hopes to break down that wall permanently, forever. He got down on his knee, pulled out a ring, looked at her in the eyes, and asked her to marry him.

The writer, on May 13 2013, asked his muse to marry him. Richard Alexander Rodgers, believing that she is his third time's the charm, asked Katherine Houghton Beckett that he be her one and done. On a sunny Monday afternoon, the writer decided it was time to make the music last.

She doesn't answer.

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**Judge away?**


End file.
